The Real Truth About Website Design & Development

The demand for website and other web services in the world is remarkably growing on a daily basis because almost every business and services want to find their way to the internet and thus the increase in the demand for website design and development services from the service providers (web developers, web programmers and web designers).

About 10-15 years ago, it will take many technicalities for someone to put up a standard website for a website programmer and also take a good amount of money say $2000 (N700k) to put up a website like a membership website. But the case is different today because web developers and programmers have simplified website design in such a way that a complete novice in web programming can build a standard website using contents management systems (CMS) applications like WordPress, Blogger, Django, Joomla, Wix Etc.

These out of the box website design applications have given rise to so many quacks parading themselves as web developers or web programmers (call it whatever name you wish). These quacks who are mostly 100% novice in all web programming languages goes out to offer “website design” jobs at incredibly low rate because of the kind of work or service they offer to clients who do not know the difference between a “website designer” and “website developer” or “website programmer”.

What Is the Difference Between Web Designer, Developer & Programmer

The three names above can be sometimes used interchangeably but let me clearly state the difference for the benefit of a novice in the web-tech space.

You can simply say a Web programmer/developer is a person who builds (both design and functionalities) custom websites and web applications using web programming languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Java Etc. These web programmers/developers are the ones who build web applications like WordPress, Blogger, Joomla, Wix Etc with their themes which can be used to build a standard website by a complete novice in web programming languages.

Meanwhile, a website designer can be a person without any single knowledge in any web programming languages. The so-called “web designers” make use of web programmer’s work to build their websites. For instance, a WordPress theme is built with the combination of different web programming languages by web programmers for easy use by a novice in web programming. The web designer uses the WordPress theme which sometimes is free or premium to build a website for a client.

How “Web Designers” Are Causing Anarchy in “Web Development” Profession

Since a standard website can be built by a person without any web programming language, clients are now carried away with the mentality that web development service is very cheap because of the price these quacks charge. Some of them charge as less as $25 (N10K) to build a website.

But building a website using CMS has limitations especially if the clients need some custom features and functionality that’s not rampant. Here a client will be confused when a real web programmer may give a price quote from $1000 (N370K). Yes, that’s the real work!

As a client, don’t under-rate web development as simple because there are levels of website designs. The fact that website A and website B are all classified as a website doesn’t mean they should be at the same range of price. Let’s take a good look at the auto sector. The fact that you can buy a golf car for say $1900 (N700K) doesn’t give you the guts to walk into a car stand and price a Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, or latest Toyota Prado bullet-proof car for the same amount even though golf and Lamborghini perform the same primary function of conveying persons and goods from one point to another.

According to a survey conducted by Oreilly.com in 2016-2017, in developed countries like United States web developers earn as much as $120,000 as average salary per annum.

Image credit: oreilly.comImage Credit : oreilly.com

Nigeria Case Study

In Nigeria, there’ve been many cases where federal government ministries and agencies get seriously embarrassed with their websites. Most times this happens during recruitment exercise. For instance, the Nigeria police, immigration, road safety and even the educational based program N-power have experienced several shutdowns and database errors during the period the website is used for recruitment exercise. Some of the errors like database are mainly due to quacks who managed the websites. Also for the fluctuation of the website during is caused by the use of low performing and most times cheap web hosting plans for the website. These errors are done by quacks who don’t know the bandwidth requirement of a particular website based on its functions.